Personal cleansing compositions are well known.
The need for mild skin cleansing compositions is made more acute by both the aging of the human population and the ever-increasing environmental insult to which the skin is subject. The mildest skin cleansing products can, at best, produce cleansing without negatively affecting the skin condition. To achieve an improvement in skin condition, the consumer is forced to use a second, separate product often called a "moisturizer". The use of two separate products to achieve the desired skin state is inconvenient and often unpleasant due to the greasy skin feel resultant from many moisturizers. As a result, many persons suffer from the effects of poor skin condition rather than use two separate products.
There is a clear need for a single product which is capable of delivering both mild skin cleansing and a skin conditioning benefit. Many skin cleansing products contain humectant substances which, although effective in topical application, are ineffective in cleansing products. These humectants are ineffective because they are very water soluble and suffer from poor skin substantivity. Hydrophobic emollient materials are generally more substantive to the skin, but are more difficult to incorporate into an aqueous skin cleansing matrix. There are at least two sources of difficulty typically encountered: poor lather effects and physically unstable product.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,829,563, Barry et al., issued Aug. 13, 1974, discloses a liquid skin cleansing composition containing petrolatum in the range of 10-70% having a diameter particle size of (&gt;95%) smaller than 5 microns.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,525, Small et al., issued Jun. 16, 1987, incorporated herein by reference, discloses mild surfactant based personal cleansing systems, primarily synbars.
Most non-solid soaps comprise mostly "soluble," "unsaturated," or shorter chains, e.g., lauric/oleic soaps for phase stability. This, however, compromises lather quality and/or mildness.
The present invention allows for the incorporation of substantially larger petrolatum particles than the prior art. These larger particles result in greater functional efficacy than previously has been achieved.